


Safety in Numbers

by jnnxsu (theaceaec)



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen, not intended to be shippy but whatever floats your boat, sorry for second person but i've lived the homestuck life for too long to stop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-08
Updated: 2016-06-08
Packaged: 2018-07-13 00:42:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 402
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7131128
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theaceaec/pseuds/jnnxsu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Your name is Qiao'an Chang. Some people call you Cho, but you're never quite sure how to feel about them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Safety in Numbers

Your name is Qiao'an Chang.

 _An_ as in _anjing_ , safety, as you watch your school slowly fall to the hands of those too blind to see that war is upon them. It's the name your mother chose when she gave birth to you in the safety of Great Britain, many miles away from the horrors of the revolution in China. She doesn't talk about it. You don't ask. But her letters to you are realistic now, filled with many parchments of her neat, font-like standard Chinese, not grass script, out of courtesy for you. Telling you, warning you. Be careful. Be safe.

Your schoolmates call you Cho, because when you first met them you were so uncomfortable with their mispronunciations of your name that you speedily stepped backwards on your own words; you made their lives easier; you made yourself smaller and less present and less available for ridicule. Now, you're not sure whether you regret that or not. But your friends understand, and they wrap their tongues around the crisp sounding _qiao_ , the consonant being enunciated between the front teeth rather than getting chewed at the back. They carefully pronounce, overexaggerate the tones: third tone, pitching low then high as if on a roller coaster; first tone, plain but comforting, the same straightforward call as that for a mother. You protested at first: you couldn't possibly trouble them to do this, to go out of their way for you. But they're Ravenclaws for a reason, they argued, and it's important. It's your name. It's who you are.

When they said that to you, you nearly cried. Sitting in the Ravenclaw common room, surrounded by the musty smell of books and towering stacks of bookshelves, their faces young and round and shining brightly wih the spirit of knowledge, of friendship; of the friendship of knowledge and the knowledge of friendship. You were safe with them.

You stand in the Room of Requirement, one of the oldest, one of the leaders. They call you Cho and you do not flinch. They are not your friends, but you and they work toward a common goal; you and they work toward the future.

An ethereal white swan sails out of your wand, and Harry looks up from the third year he is helping. He catches your eye and you smile automatically. He smiles back and you hear his whisper from across the room,

"Qiao An."

**Author's Note:**

> I didn't really write this with the intention of anyone reading it, but I did write it, so I thought I would post it.
> 
> Qiao3an1 Chang is indeed a viable Chinese name; Chang is a common surname that can have Mandarin and, more rarely, Cantonese roots. The characters for this name are 巧安. Qiao begins with the ending consonant of "wince" and rhymes with "how." An sounds like "and" without the d. Chang is a shorter a, somewhere in between the vowel sounds of "man" and "long."
> 
> Any questions, critiques, or comments? You can contact me @ricefarmking on Twitter.


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